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Finance Budgets

A finance budget limits what may be spent on a nominal account, a cost centre or both, for a year or one period. Purchase orders are checked against it when they are issued, so a budget can warn, route an order for extra approval, or refuse it. The Budgets tab of Ledger & Finance shows each budget line against what is committed on orders and what has actually been spent.

Where to find it

Admin Panel → Finance:

  • Ledger & Finance — the Budgets tab: add, change, lock and remove budget lines, and see budget against committed and actual spend

Architect Panel → ERP - Finance:

  • Budgets — the budget lines as a datastore; its badge counts blocking budgets with no budget holder

Adding a budget line

  1. Choose the company at the top, open Budgets, choose the Version and Financial year, and press Add a budget line.
  2. Give an Account, a Cost centre, or both. Optionally narrow it by Analysis 2 and Analysis 3.
  3. Set the Financial year (blank for every year) and the Period (Whole year or one period).
  4. Enter the Amount and its Currency.
  5. Choose the Enforcement: Company default, Warn, Route for approval, Block or Off.
  6. Optionally allow a margin with Tolerance % or Tolerance amount, and limit the line with Effective from and Effective to.
  7. Tick Lock it (approved - not changed by later edits) once the budget is agreed, and press Add budget line.

What the enforcement modes do

  • Warn: an order that would go over is allowed, and the breach is recorded.
  • Route for approval: also allowed and recorded, and it is the signal an approval matrix can use to add an approval stage.
  • Block: an order that would go over, beyond any tolerance, is refused.
  • Off: no check.

When an order line matches both a finance budget and a project budget, both have to permit it. If the system cannot tell whether a budget applies, it refuses rather than letting the spend through unchecked.

Reading the tab

The cards show Budget, Committed (ordered, not yet received), Spent (posted to the ledger) and Remaining. The table lists each line with Budget, Committed, Received (orders), Spent (ledger), Remaining and Used / status; select a line to see the transactions behind it. A note above the table says how much expense was posted to accounts and cost centres no line covers. Export writes the table as CSV.

What goes wrong

  • "Pairs of budget lines overlap exactly": two lines cover the same account and cost centre equally specifically, so a purchase coded to them is refused until one is changed or removed.
  • "Give an account, a cost centre, or both": a line needs at least one.
  • A line cannot be removed: it already has commitments or actuals. Set its amount to 0 instead.
  • Orders blocked on day one: a company's default enforcement is Block before budgets are written. Use Warn until every line exists.

Worked example

A company budgets 12,000.00 for the year on 6500 Advertising and marketing for cost centre CONS, enforcement Warn. A quarter later the Budget Breaches list shows three orders that went over, all for a trade show the budget missed. The controller raises the line to 15,000.00, locks it, and switches it to Block with a 5% tolerance. The next order that would take marketing past 15,750.00 is refused when the buyer tries to issue it.

Recommendations

  • Run in Warn for a quarter before switching to Block: the breaches show what Block would have stopped.
  • Prefer one specific line to two overlapping ones; overlaps refuse spend.
  • Lock agreed budgets so later edits do not change the approved figure.
  • Give each cost centre a budget holder on the Set-up tab if your approval matrix routes to budget holders.